Education
Booker T. Washington High School.
Booker T. Washington High School.
Raised in Oxford, Mississippi, Wright played all levels of basketball in Memphis – high school, collegiate and professional. Wright was selected a Third Team All-America by the Associated Press as a sophomore at the University of Memphis. After being selected seventh overall by the Los Angeles Clippers in the 1996 National Basketball Association Draft out of the University of Memphis, Wright moved on to the Atlanta Hawks in 1999.
He was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies in 2001, but returned to the Hawks in 2006.
On February 16, 2008, he was involved in a multi-player trade, going from Atlanta to Sacramento for Mike Bibby. He held career averages of 8.0 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, playing in 778 (793 including playoffs) National Basketball Association games over 13 seasons.
His family filed a missing persons report on July 22. After Wright"s body was found on July 28 in a wooded area on Callis Cutoff Road just west of Hacks Cross Road, it was reported that a 9-1-1 call had been received from his cell phone in the early morning of July 19 by the Germantown, Tennessee 911 dispatch center.
The caller was speaking with the dispatcher when gunshots rang out.
The case is being investigated as a homicide. Wright"s body is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee. As of 2016, the case remains unsolved because the emergency call was not traced and diverted properly.